Jeremy Swayman made 38 saves for the Bruins (3-3-1), who finished 1-1-1 on their three-game road trip.
“Obviously, there’s a lot to work on, but I thought we had a good start,” Boston defenseman Nikita Zadorov said. “I thought the guys were battling hard today. It’s hard to win in this league. We played a really desperate team today. They came out, they played hard. They generated chances. They scored on their chances. We didn’t. That was the difference in the game.”
O’Reilly gave Nashville a 1-0 lead at 17:16 of the first period with a power-play goal on a redirection of a shot by Josi.
“You go through a [losing streak] like this, you’ve got to celebrate [a win] a little bit and enjoy it,” Predators coach Andrew Brunette said. “It was well-deserved. I think we were squeezing our sticks and feeling a little bit of the heat, and it could’ve [gone] two different ways. I think today they stayed positive, they encouraged each other, and they helped each other get out of it a little bit here for one game.”